'Agent of transformation': GOP senators praise Donald Trump's FBI director pick, Kash Patel

Kashyap "Kash" Patel is receiving high marks from Senate Republicans in his quest to be President-elect Donald Trump's next FBI director.

The 44-year-old former federal prosecutor and national security official, considered a Trump loyalist by many, has promised major changes to the country's top law enforcement agency.

Like many of the president-elect's supporters, Patel has been a vocal critic of the so-called "deep state" or longtime members of the country's national security bureaucracy.

"Kash Patel is an agent of transformation. He’ll do a great job," Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told USA Today.

Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, said he hadn't met Patel one-on-one but had spoken to him previously.

"Kash is great," he said. "Can’t wait to get Kash there."

Patel's nomination signals Trump wants to remove current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who the former president nominated in 2017 to what was supposed to be a 10-year term.

"We still don't know what Director Wray's plans are," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Monday. "But eventually I assume Mr. Patel will be confirmed as the next FBI director."

Wray has fallen out of favor with Trump and his GOP allies in Congress, who hold resentment toward the bureau for its investigations aimed at the former president, such as his possession of national security documents his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, which were discovered after he left the White House.

Other Republicans have called out the FBI for a federal court ruling in July that said the agency failed to alert social media companies that a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was real rather than Russian disinformation days before the 2020 presidential election.

In a stinging 11-page letter, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, blasted Wray for what he described as "failed" leadership. The incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said Monday he has "seen enough" and that Wray should step aside.

But some GOP senators told USA TODAY they don’t know much about Patel, who has been criticized by Democrats and nonpartisan groups for lacking the experience to lead the FBI and for peddling conspiracy theories about federal government employees, the COVID-19 vaccine and more.

Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir "One Damn Thing After Another" that he remembers saying Patel's appointment to deputy FBI director would happen "over my dead body."

"Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency," Barr wrote in the 2022 book.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he thinks Patel will do a "good job," but notes he didn’t serve with Patel and doesn’t know him as well as other Trump cabinet picks, such as Pam Bondi who has been nominated for attorney general.

“Honestly, I don't know anything about him," Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said.

"His name was vaguely familiar to me, but I don't know his background, his experience. I'm going to need to do a lot of work on his nomination. The FBI post is a really important one, but I just don't have an opinion."

Contributing: Savannah Kuchar, Bart Jansen and Sudiksha Kochi

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's FBI choice Kash Patel receiving Senate Republican kudos